Search for a command to run...
Coronary Artery Disease accounts for approximately 25% of deaths annually, and remains theleading cause of mortality inthe United States. Myocardial ischemic (MI) damage is the initialinjury, characterized by irreversible hyper-contracture of cardiac muscle. Currently, there is nopharmacologic treatment tomitigate MI damage that may occur inthe 250,000CABGs,215,000percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), and heart transplantation. We havepreviously reported that naltrindole (NTI) dose-dependently reduces infarct size upto82% ininvivomyocardial ischemia-reperfusion(MI/R) studies whengivenprior toregional ischemia. Werecently have shownthat NTI elicits this robust infarct size reducing effect by anovelmechanism since NTI alsoreduces polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMNs) superoxide (SO)release at concentrations corresponding tothe blood concentrationinthe invivoMI/R study(8mg/kg = ~200uM; 4mg/kg = ~100uM). PMNs donot express opioid receptors, and NTI isknowntobe adeltaopioid receptor antagonist.Inour ex vivoLangendorff rat MI/R model, male SD rats (~300g) were anesthetized, heartswere removed, perfused with 37°C Krebs’ buffer and apressure transducer was placed intheleft ventricle (LV). Baseline recordings were made during the first 10minand the hearts werepretreated with NTI (5uM, n=8), naloxone (NX; panopioid receptor antagonist; 10uM, n=6)and binaltorphimine (BNI; kappaopioid receptor antagonist, 5uM, n=7) or controls (n=12) for 5mins prior toglobal I(30min)/R(45min).Ischemic PeakPressure (IPP) incontrolI/R heartswas39±3mmHg comparedtopre-ischemicLVEDP of9±1mmHg atbaseline(n=12,p<0.01),resultinginsubstantialinfarctatthe endof45minR (32±4%).IPP wasreduced byNTI (18±3mmHg/s)comparedtoallgroups(p<0.05).FinaldP/dt maxandinfarctsize were mostimprovedwith NTI (1830±90mmHg/s, 7±2%)comparedtocontrol(777±142mmHg/s, 32±4%,p<0.01).Cardiacfunctionandinfarctsize did notimprovewith BNI orNX. The resultssuggested that NTI exerted robust cardioprotectionwith significant reductionininfarct sizeindependent of deltaor kappaopioid receptor which led toinvestigating its possible underlyingmechanism of action.